Virginia agency says it will not exempt information on fracking fluid from disclosure

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Virginia agency says it will not exempt information on fracking fluid from disclosure

By ROBERT ZULLO Richmond Times-Dispatch Feb 26, 2017

Legislation that would have shielded specific concentrations of chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing from public disclosure was rejected in a Senate committee this month, a vote that drew cheers from environmental groups. ... “The dangers of fracking proved simply too great to ignore,” said Kate Addleson, director of the Virginia chapter of the Sierra Club, in a statement. “We applaud the senators’ choice to maintain transparency and put people over polluters.”

But Miles Morin, executive director of the Virginia Petroleum Council, among the industry groups that supported the bills as reasonable trade-secret protections for the often geologically specific cocktails of chemicals drillers use, said the legislation’s defeat could sow confusion among the public and state agencies about Freedom of Information Act requests related to fracking fluids.

“The problem is that without enacting a FOIA exemption, the legislature has failed to provide clarity to the public and state employees about how that information should be handled,” Morin said. ... “We think the regulations call for trade-secret protections. What we have now is a little less clarity about how that will be done.”
....

A 2015 report by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found no evidence that fracking has “led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States,” though it did find specific instances where drinking water was contaminated. ...
In December, however, the EPA issued a final version of that report that excised that language.
....

This story has been updated to note that the EPA issued a final version of the report in December.

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